I'm delighted to learn that Nick Clegg's literary hero is Samuel Beckett. He may even have to fall back on him in the coming days: the great lesson of Godot, after all, is the need for stoicism in the face of disappointment. I was only sorry that Clegg failed to mention Beckett's novels or that masterly radio play, All That Fall, which makes a salutary point about the folly of expenditure cuts: "We could have saved sixpence. We have saved fivepence. But at what cost?"

But, glad as I am for Clegg's endorsement of Beckett and tempting as it is to see Clegg and Cable as a Vladimir and Estragon awating the non-arrival of proportional representation, I supect there is no exact correlation between literary sophistication and political effectiveness. Clem Attlee's favourite reading matter was Agatha Christie; yet his 1945-51 administration brought us the Arts Council, empowered local government arts spending and set money aside for a National Theatre. Harold Wilson, likewise, was not exactly famed for his literary taste but between 1964 and 1970 championed an exponential rise in arts funding and initiated the Open University. Michael Foot, on the other hand, was the best-read politician of modern times but unable to overcome the monstrous political dreadnought that was Margaret Thatcher.

Even if a love of books is no guarantee of political success, I'd still rather be governed by people who have some imaginative hinterland. Two thoughts, however, strike me. One is that the insane demands we make on modern prime ministers virtually preclude time for recreational reading: gone are the leisurely days when Harold Macmillan could retire to bed with his Trollope. I also know I'm not alone in my dismay at the marginalisation of the arts in the current electoral debate.

We all know the old mantra: "there are no votes in the arts". But I just don't believe it. And, although Labour's manifesto acknowledges the existence of the arts, I'm disappointed at the government's failure to trumpet its success in this area. It has much to boast about: a booming subsidised theatre, record museum and gallery attendances, major investment in film. These things have not happened by accident but are a result of policy decisions taken over the last 13 years. Yet the government remains strangely silent about the way it has helped to enrich our lives. The media too, with a few exceptions, bypasses the arts. If there has been any debate between rival arts spokespersons, of the kind Andrew Neil has been hosting each afternoon on BBC1, I must have missed it.

So good on Nick Clegg for coming out in praise of Beckett. But his gesture would have more meaning if it were part of a wider discussion about the future of the arts in Britain. If we really are heading for a period of sustained economic gloom, we are going to need the arts more rather than less in order to remind us of life's potential. Yet in this election campaign the subject of culture, in the broadest sense, has been the biggest pachyderm of all in the political arena.